The Oxi Fresh Franchisee of the Year Shares How He Successfully Operates 3 Franchises and 25 Locations Across 5 States

Show Notes

Jesse Keyser teaches how to hire, train, and grow a thriving company culture. The Oxi Fresh Franchisee of the Year also explains the importance of on-going advertising, gathering objective online Google reviews and an endless buffet of knowledge bombs.

Jesse Keyser – Franchisee of the Year

Jesse and Charles Keyser

Sports Clips

Lil Caesar

Oxi Fresh

How they started:

Started working 80 hours per week in the Lil’ Caesar’s store using $100,000 of savings.

If you could go back in time and tell yourself something, what would that be?

I would talk to myself about how i treated and talked to people in my early years.

What is the cost to get an Oxi Fresh franchise up and going?

$37,900 up front

Equipment package

Product

Protected zip codes

Training included

$20,000-$25,000 in operating capital to get things up to speed

Audio Transcription

All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back to the business conferences conversation. It is the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download now. Chip, I’m very excited about today’s show because we have the senior editor for Forbes magazine on the bottom half of the show and we have the Franchisee of the year or Oxi fresh on the show. Matt Klein. How are you doing, my friend?

I’m doing great today guys. I hope you all are doing well as a, as well. So excited about today’s show and being able to have our franchisee of the year on year to talk to you guys about Oxi fresh.

No matter how did he, how did he get that award? What was the, you know, the parameters that you gave that award out?

Yeah, so for, for Jesse and Charles, um, they uh, had been in our system if you’re a few years now, it just comes down to their ability to utilize all the, um, the resource that we have. It is, it is multitiered, so not only just them being at the top in terms of sales numbers, but also we look into things as into, you know, how they’re following the systems, how they can be a resource for other franchisees across the country. Um, they’re very involved with the Home Office. They are pushing the business conferences envelope on things that we can do better on at the Home Office as well because it certainly is a two way street, right? It’s just not us telling franchisees what to do. It’s franchisees getting us there at, you know, their two cents into what can make them operate their businesses better day to day. And so they are very, very good at that. They’ve helped, um, all sorts of different departments and Inaki fresh just operate better. Right. You can always get better. So they’re very good at that.

No, Jesse, I’m not sure if you’ve read this article that you’re featured in entrepreneur.com. There’s an article that says, this band of brothers operates three franchises at 18 low crikey, 18 locations across four states. My friend will go on to the thrive time show. How are you doing? How are you doing today?

We’re good that, that Eric was old data. We’ve got more states and more, uh, more units.

What data’s update is how many states and how many units the same with brick and mortar units. I think we’re at a 25 and a five states and then we’ve got a six territories of oxy fresh.

Wow. Okay. So I guess the business conferences question that all the listeners would have out there that maybe own just one business, how do you organize your day on a daily basis there? Mr Jesse, what is your, what are your moves? What are your systems for organizing your.

I tried to not have anything on my calendar. I try to delegate as many things as I can to someone else on my team. So I’m partly free to handle a unique situations that come up. And then, uh, also just to do a lot of deep thinking and research on new ideas, new leadership concepts or even new business concepts. So, you know, we’ve got a saying that we have. Was this a boy caught me off guard.

Oh no problem.

So yeah, so we, we want to systemize the predictable so we can humanize the unprepared.

Just put that on the show notes. Again, that’s systemized or systemize the predictable, predictable to what?

Optimize the predictable. So you can humanize the unpredictable.

Don’t want to do for a second, I just want to crawl inside deep inside the bowels of the man cave and just sort of system. So you can humanize Jesse. Can you walk us through what that means to you?

Well that means that if you know that something is a reputation or is pretty predictable, then you have an operating guideline and a system to follow that you can easily delegate and train other people to do. And so when things fall out of that norm, that’s when it requires a human touch and the interaction to basically take care of it and get it back into a system.

Okay, so let me, let me ask you this because we have a lot of business conferences listeners that listen to this all across the country, hundreds of thousands of listeners. Um, when you first started, you and your brother Charles, what was the first franchise you started with? What was the, did you start with a little caesars? Did you start with the sports clubs? Did you start with an Oxi fresh? When did you start?

It was a little caesars. We both worked in the restaurant probably 80 hours a week. Um, you know, we started our investment with a $100,000 I had saved up and parlayed that into, uh, an SBA loan and every single thing that we own has come from that $100,000 seed money. So the very first year we had to work our tails off, we didn’t pay ourselves very much cut costs as best we could so we could generate enough cashflow. We woke up the second one and so on and so on. So we’re in five states now because of $100,000 I saved up.

That’s a great story. So when did you know it was time to open up the next franchise? W what point did you say, okay, now it’s time to open up store number two.

Well, it was pretty simple. I mean the unit economics of one store wasn’t enough for me and Charles, my brothers both live on, uh, so lifestyle that we were accustomed to before we opened it up. So, I mean store wine. It was as soon as I was getting built, we are already looking for locations for store number two.

Jesse, if you probably could have just lived off the pizza man when the moon hits your eye. So Jesse, when did you decide it was time to look into an Oxi fresh? What was the sports clips that came next or was it Oxi fresh?

No, actually it was packed and it was a situation where I was married at the time and she was in the medical profession and she’s like, you know, for me to make money I have to see patients and I’d rather know with clients once in a awhile and get a check from them every month. And I was like, okay, well let’s look at some options. And there was limited advertising and marketing options where we had our little caesars. So I said, well, we can, we can strengthen the base and add to it. So we got into valpack to supplement some of our marketing costs and also be a new new venture for us. Um, I’m not in anymore. It wasn’t my passion, but I learned a lot. And one thing that I learned is that when I would go and try to, uh, educate other business owners on our product and our services for Valpack, I was interviewing them about their job, their margins, their patterns of, of client flow, employment challenges, business challenges.

And I did that for a couple of years where I get an idea of about how every type of business that could or use would use valpack operates. And because of that I got into the salon business and I got into the carpet cleaning business because those were people I were talking to. And quite honestly, neither one of those business conferences categories would spend money with me very consistently in valpack. And I realized that the majority of the people that own those types of businesses don’t know how to invest in their own business and marketing if it’s done right, is an investment. So I saw a huge opportunity where the other business owners, we’re just not investing in their own business back into it and someone that would would definitely take the cake.

So you went from step one was little caesars $100,000, $100,000. You and your brother are working 80 hours a week, living off the pizza, cutting costs. Step two, you get into valpack. Step three, was it sports clips or Oxi fresh?

It was forklifts and it was again, I got off the phone with a Franchisee of another, a hair salon. It was really rude to me on the phone. I was really angry. He called my brother up and said, let’s get in the hair business. So we did our due diligence and found a brand that we really identified with. And then we started opening up salons all around where that guy had flunked.

I’ve got a question for you. How did you land on little caesars? All the businesses out there you can franchise how? How did you. How’d

you pick that one to start off with?

That’s a great story. So at the time my wife at the time was from Detroit, Michigan and she had turned me onto another pizza concept called hungry Howie’s. A lot of people never heard of it, but the air are the seventh largest pizza chain in the United States and we went through all their discovery day. We’ve got awarded a franchise and we were going to open up our first one in Carbondale, Illinois words, which is where I went to college and where I lived and I had a nice high paying job and he’s like, we’re not going to be able to let you open one up there right now. We had some distribution deals fall through, but we could have you open up some in Indiana or Ohio. There’s even a couple for cell if you want to get going right now. And I said, okay, well let me think about.

I got phone and I thought at that point, the Ripe Age of 27 that Carbondale, Illinois was the center of the universe and I could never leave it, so I just got on the Internet and search pizza franchises and I saw all these names I’d never heard of. And then I saw a little Caesar’s. I never had little caesars. I grew up in such a rural area that there was never a little caesars there. Remember the commercials? I thought they went out of business. So I thought to myself, you know, they got a mascot and they got a name everyone’s heard of. I’m like, that’s all I really need, so let’s go find out what we got in. We got in at such an early stage that the website didn’t say anything about the $5 hot and ready pizza. It still said Pizza, pizza all over it. They talked about doing things like delivery and uh, so we got in before the hot and ready explosion really took off and we got in right at the right time was a good timing.

What year was that?

And that happened and that happened, that happened because another franchise or wasn’t able to give me currently a license for the town I really wanted to be in.

And what year was that?

So 2004 is when I got awarded the franchise for Little Caesar’s. But our first location didn’t open until March of 2005.

When did you decide to get involved with oxy fresh?

That was 2014. So I had been gone to the a franchise update multiunit conference for a couple of years and a couple of friends of mine that own another concept with me, like their franchisees as well had told me they just signed up and that they were really impressed with the company. So we spent some time talking to them. Carpet cleaned, quite frankly was a market that we are already thinking about getting into, but we didn’t know if we want to do a franchise or if we wanted to try doing her own thing. We’ve always been a little heavy towards the franchise because I’ve got a really high quick start and I really just want to get something that works. That’s great. Let’s do it. I don’t really care about inventing something or trying to reinvent the wheel fast as you can and make as much money as you can.

So with Oxi fresh, can you.

I’d like to get Matt to take on this tube. I want to start with you there. Jesse, what appealed to you most about the Oxi fresh franchise and why do you feel like you’ve been able to be so successful with this franchise?

Well, I think they understand that marketing pack or a pay per click on google or a facebook ad. They’ve always understood the value of investing back in the business of marketing and doing it correctly and efficiently and I don’t think a lot of the competitors in that market space. I’m really focused on that as much as Oxi fresh does.

So with an Oxi fresh. Matt, I want to get your take on this because Jessie obviously is an outlier. He and his brother Charles, they are the Franchisee of the year in a system where there are hundreds of franchisees. What makes Jessie and Charles so special? What makes them such an asset to the brand? Why do you feel like they are the cause of franchising? Everyone has access to the same tools. Why are they so successful?

I work at the Home Office where we have so many resources. I mean, I worked for oxy fresh as a franchise developer before I became a franchise. Right. So I’ve been able to have a lot of interactions with all sorts of franchisees within the system and everyone brings their own thing. Um, you know, two different business conferences conversations and to the brand, you know, what Jesse and Charles, um, they are bringing even more innovation to oxy fresh. I mean I actually use um, a lot of things that they do with their business, so I use a very similar platform to how we hire technicians because they spent the time and it seems very trivial, but they spent the time to really engage with each other and say what would make it

look really good for a technician or someone finding a job to work for us. Right. It’s not just about making money, it’s about having a culture. It’s about understanding your job roles and understanding what you’re going to get when you get into oxy fresh and work for Jesse and Charles. Right? And I mean, I think those little things make them really set themselves apart, you know, they’re thinking about every little detail, not just about getting employees, but making an environment that’s, that’s a, uh, a positive experience for those employees so they can actually want to work for you and do that because every franchise I’ve ever talked to are worried about hiring people.

Right? Well, if you make the environment, I’m a happy place and room for growth, personal growth and financial growth, then people want to join your business. So they’ve really taken other steps, not just with hiring but also in terms of marketing, doing different things with commercial, being able to share those best practices with our advisory board and, and our corporate office, you know, they’re not just doing things and holding in their pocket. They want the brand to expand and they, you know, they’ve helped us with a lot of different things like that. So you, Kudos to them really

taking everything we’ve given them. And expanding it and then bring it back to us and then letting us share that with the rest of the franchise.

I’d like to hear your take on why you been able to make your little caesars franchises, your Oxi fresh locations in your sports clips. So successful in terms of unit economics or profitability or size. When so many people struggle to manage just one franchise. What are you doing differently during your week, during your work week than the average franchise

owner?

I think our philosophy from day one has been to overdevelop every single team member in our company. So creating an environment where they can handle and do more things and what their current position requires of them has made it so we can grow pretty fast, have higher unit unit economics. And uh, honestly I don’t work a whole lot. I get to travel. I’ve got locations, I go years be in between visiting and it’s because of the infrastructure that we’ve created with our team, the human capital that we’ve invested in.

So let’s say that I’m listening to you out there. I’m taking notes and I’m going, okay, great. I’m going to, I’m going to do that. What is the, what are the, what are the mechanics for doing that? When you had like one story, you had the one little Caesar’s where you saved $200,000 of your own money to build the first one. You’re working 80 hours a week. What were the mechanics of overdeveloping every position? Did you have weekly staff trainings? Did you personally invest time in this or give us the action items for the listeners out there,

what, you know, what the little caesars with that being our first business and uh, the pool of applicants that you get, we are leadership and development was more of an osmosis approach and if you didn’t like it, you got to go try something different. New with a different company. And we hired someone new. When I got into the salon business though, it was a different. It’s a different beast basically. I’ve got a limited number of people that I can hire in the geographic area because you have to invest it in a to the technology degree and then be licensed and keep your license up to date with the state that you’re located in so you have a smaller pool of people and so you can’t run through them as fast and and find the personalities that Mesh and are in line with what you and I learned real quick.

I’m like, I had people that I couldn’t get to perform or they weren’t performing and I really didn’t have an option to get rid of them. Not that they were bad employees. I mean it’s just they weren’t performing where they needed to be. So I sat back and looked at us like if I get rid of this person, I have an empty chair. I have less income coming in, so how do I make it so this person can do more and be more productive? And it was pretty easy to. It was pretty easy to figure out that if you overdeveloped them, they could actually do more. They were happier and they stuck around long.

Do you have like weekly meetings with your team to train them or how do you, how did you, what were the mechanics for overdose? Belting people

you know, span that out over five states now. We do have a weekly meeting that I haven’t participated in I think almost two years where it’s done over Webex and yet, and all the, all the salary people in our organization sit on it and um, they go over numbers. They talked about challenges, best practices and um, it normally lasts about 20 to 30 minutes and it’s every Monday. And I’m proud to say that I haven’t participated in over two years probably. I know it’s been at least a year and a half if not two. So that’s a. go ahead.

What are they talk about during that meeting? What kind of stuff are you guys covering on the agenda?

What, what we, what I did many years ago is I just created a good number of powerpoint slides where they put in key business indicators and uh, they, the, the manager, the district managers did this and that. It gave them a talking point of what to do, but I talked to my district or area managers on a daily basis. I’m not face to face but over the phone, so I’m constantly developing them to develop leaders around them, so the templates that I created are just talking points and we’ll say, hey, you know, your client counts are up, why do you think that is? What’s what’s affecting that and how do we capitalize on that more and then there’s a discussion with 20 plus people on the phone or on the Webex meeting about what they’re doing and then other people are getting those ideas. So what I’ve done is pretty much created a mastermind group with within my own company.

Got It, got it. You kind of touched on a little bit some of your secret power moves on hiring and one of them I thought kind of went a little bit something where you went into the cosmetology schools and you were actually doing some time to help the kids help the people I should say in in the interview that they’re going to ultimately have a. can you. Can you go to that story?

You know, I learned a long time ago, relationships are like bank accounts and unfortunately, a lot of people are always walking around with an overdraft, a bank account as far as the relationships that they have in their life.

Say that again, like kind of like our country.

Yeah, exactly. So our, our cosmetology schools that are kind enough to allow me to come in and represent my company to everyone that is going to school there and I needed to do something that goes back to the entire cosmetology community. So we started doing mock interviews but they weren’t interviews to be with her lips. They were interviews for a salon in general and I started teaching what to look for when they were in interviews to see if that was fun they really wanted to work at or not. Um, and so, you know, I taught them. I was like, you know, the people that own salon, they went to school just like you did. They didn’t go to business school, they didn’t go to management school. They probably don’t have an MBA. They probably don’t know how they really should be interviewing and they don’t really know how they should be around their business, so what they’re gonna do is they’re going to try to hire the culture and develop the courts culture and their salon, so they’re going to ask you questions that they’re hurting or lacking of right now, so if they ask you things like, can you count change back correctly?

They have cash management problem, they ask you if we’re going to show up to work on time. They have people not showing up to work on time and not showing up for their shifts, so they’re trying to hire that culture in and so I just let the students who are about to graduate realize you don’t have to bounce around from company to company to find the right fit. You can do that, erode in much quicker if you start listening to the telltale signs of the interviewee and what they’re actually telling you about their company.

That’s great advice because that actually can apply almost every genre. That’s awesome. Absolutely.

So going back to the relationship thing, you have to make the deposits into that account before you can make a withdrawal. So that’s what I teach all my managers with all their team members and the cosmetology community in general is like we have to constantly be making deposits. So when we need to make a withdrawal, it’s there for us to do it.

Now guys, this is exciting news for Mr Jesse. Jesse, you are the Franchisee of the year for oxy fresh as we, as we stated earlier and z right now based on the trend I’m seeing right now. Zack o’malley junior, or is that Gemelli Greenberg, the senior editor for Forbes on the show. We just had the author of Rich Dad, poor dad, Sharon Lechter on the show. We’re getting a lot of these great folks. I think we’re going to end up hitting number one on the business charts and about three or four weeks and based on the, on the release schedule we might have the Franchisee of the year on the number one.

Yes.

Say, ah, here we go. You’re holding court. I would like to ask you some tough questions and then Matt, you can sort of mediate here to tell me if I’m asking too many tough questions. Mr Jesse referee? Yeah. Yeah. There’s somebody out there who really, really, really wants to be.

You know they’re going, gosh, and so they’re saying they’re sitting down with you for lunch, just you and them one on one and they’re going, I don’t a little Caesar’s and it’s not going very well. I own an Oxi fresh and it’s not going very well and I own a sports clips and it’s not going very well. It’s not the cyst. It’s obviously not the company because I own the same companies that you have and your unit economics are way beyond mine. I own a sports clips, but yours is just dominating. You’re bringing in two and three times the revenue that I am and anyone could look at the franchise disclosure documents and see that I’m doing a third of the revenue that you are with the same system. What am I doing wrong? Jesse? Can you just give us that hard truth? What’s the stuff that most people are doing wrong that you guys have? You probably learned through trial and error, but what are the things that most people are doing wrong that they just need to quit doing the dysfunctions,

so I’d say there’s two parts to that. The first part is they probably allows it, the standards in their company to be far, far lower than they really should be. Many, many times I see people change their goals or expectations and others to reflect the current habits versus moving the habits of higher to a higher level, matched the goals that they have. The other thing is in combination, how you fix it, it simply is the five closest people in your life who you’re with and the books you’re reading. Those are the two things are going to have the biggest impact, the trajectory of your of your life.

So people aren’t. People are what? Their expectations.

Yeah. They lower their expectations to meet the current standards for changing their current habits, to meet those expectations and it’s a. it’s a coping mechanism.

So notable, quotable, a steve jobs who couldn’t be here because he’s deceased. He said, be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected, which 100 percent echoes what you just said. So you’ve got to raise the standard not lower your expectations. You got to raise the culture, not lower your expectations. That’s a powerful nugget of knowledge. And you also just mentioned, hey, it’s the books you’re reading and the five people you spend time with. So I would like to, you know, get into the private life of, of Jesse Kaiser, the Franchisee of the year. What are some books? What are some books where you go that book right there. Oh, that book, that made a big impact on me. What are some of the books that made it a big impact on you and why?

You talked about Rich Dad, poor dad, I’m their second book was cashflow quadrant and that was a book and read early in my life and probably had more impact on me and rich Dad, poor dad because it allowed me to understand. So they talked about in the first book they talk about basically having cash flow assets or working for somebody. And the cashflow quadrant, really it talks about your time. Talk to me about your time and um, you know, when you’re in the eat your heavy time, low income and when you’re in the I quadrant, you’re low tides and heavy, heavy cash flow. Uh, and so that just kind of made me look at life is what do I have to do to I? What can I do to lessen the amount of work time and increase my income?

So employee who has not read the book. Step one is employee, step two is self employed. Step three is business owner and step four is investor. And we just interviewed Sharon Lechter on the CPA who co wrote the book with Kiyosaki where she explains the quadrant. So when you’re saying, ah, you referring to investor B, business owner as self employed, he, employee Z, I’d like to get your take on this because you were an employee self employed at the same time. Yes. How did you, how did you dr Z get out of that. And I want to go back to Jesse on this [inaudible]. This is a powerful thing when you’re an employee. And you’re also self employed, you’re doing your dual employment, so to speak, because he talked about what that’s like from your, from your perspective, what your journey was like.

Yeah, it makes it real busy because you know your work, you have to work in the business to keep it going. And then you were wanting to work on the business in your free time. So that means you can’t watch the US average of five point two hours of TV a day. I know you can’t be on the, uh, the, the, the book face, two point something hours a day, whatever. Everybody’s on it, you know. Um, so you have to make, you have to make sacrifices, but you know, that you’re eventually getting to the eye in this cash cashflow quadrant to scenario. Uh, you know, you’re wanting to get down to there. So for me, the day I hired my first doctor, that was a, that was a big thing. That was a big deal because then I could take a day or two and not have to be the employee, you know, you see what I’m saying?

And then I could keep working on my business. Now I, Hey, I got a little more free time and you just kind of continue to do that. I lot of people ask me all the time, just like with you Jessie, you know, I own several different businesses and I don’t spend a lot of time at any one of them. They’re like, do you, do you, you know, it’s Kinda like the caddyshack movie. You own a lumber yard, don’t you? Because you had to. I don’t know where they are, but uh, you know, you get to the investment, you get good people, you good, good systems and then you touch them and you inspect every now and then and uh, uh, you know, you, you inspect what you expect and you keep a hand on it. But you don’t have to sit in there and go, I haven’t done an eye exam and quite a while

and, but this is where a lot of you’ll get stuck. And I want to go back to Jesse on this is people understand the theory. They go, okay, I’m going to be an employee. You get, I’m going to save money and have two jobs and I’m going to become self-employed and people and Z. I see that you don’t do this, and Jessie, I see that you don’t do this. People are greedy and they refuse to pay well for good managers. They refuse to pay managers well in managing people is the tough part. I mean you’d have a mutiny out there if you didn’t have great managers. Jesse and I’ve heard you brag on your managers that you haven’t sports clips and Brag on the managers at little Caesar’s and Brag under managers at oxy fresh. Can you talk to us about the importance of investing and rewarding and paying your managers well and training your managers well because it just doesn’t work without the manager’s Jesse,

a small percentage of the US population that responds solely on what or how many commas or their paycheck and those people are called salespeople and they have a unique ability where they can envision what they want to do with that money and that motivates them. I think money is a determining factor for most people, but it’s not the only one true. Um, so for me, for the investment while I tried to pay well and I tried to get them opportunities where when they really performed, they really earned income, real income of it’s the personal growth and development that is the investment that I’m most able to make an investment on them and I’m seeing that the gain is a, it’s better for me for my unit economics, but also the tenure with my employees and the quality of their personal life is much higher. So the investment, why it’s part, how much you pay them, it’s also part how much attention you paid to them and what you do with them.

I agree with what you’re saying. And I think this is one thing I, I see a lot Z is it, you’ll see a small business owner with 10 employees and they want to have time freedom, right? So they just simply, they don’t hire a manager and they leave. They’re just not there. And there’s nobody in charge of that org chart. And so, um, you guys are, both of you have decided to hire managers or people to run things, so like your auto auction as an example. Um, if you’re around Dr Elena for any moment, for any extended period of time, you’re going to learn about the auto auction of the optometry clinic and you guys are going to sell like a thousand cars every Friday at the xe 66 auto auction or 750 cars, thousand cars. But there’s somebody who manages that business for you. You know, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs want to skip the hiring of the manager altogether. They just don’t have any managers. Can you talk about the importance of, of Monte and his role managing and operating the auto auction?

Well, I’ve got, I’ve got three choices here I can make, right? Yeah, go for it. I can hire a great manager and kickback and have a beverage of choice and show up when I want to show up and shake hands and kiss babies and things are rocking and rolling. Okay. I could too. I could step in myself, give myself another job, become an employee again. And I could manage it myself, I could step in and go, you know, what, I, I, I want to eight to five, Monday through Friday job again, or three. I could not hire manager, not be there myself and let chaos reign.

Remember the Alamo, it could be like the Forbes, the 80 percent of businesses that are shutting down, which we hate. Um, so those are your three choices, really. The way I break it down. So,

so, you know, Jesse, I want to tap into your wisdom on this and I want to get matt to take on this as well. Online marketing. Let’s go with a Oxi fresh for 5,000 makeup point poop. Here we go. Oxi fresh is top in the world and Google search engine results for a lot of reasons. One, the Oxi fresh team and Jonathan Barnett and the leadership team have invested in the online search engine optimization technology. Uh, the strategy they’ve fully committed to it. A two, it’s in the national ad fund. So what do you like it or not? If you’re an Oxi fresh Franchisee, you have committed to it. Um, but as a franchisee you have to do some things and one of the things you have to do is you have to get objective google reviews from ideal and likely buyers. And this is what I have heard through the business conferences rumor mill. Jonathan Barnett is always bragging on you, Jesse. I’m Mr Oxi fresh Franchisee of the year. He’s saying that you are like the, the king of Google reviews. How have Google reviews impacted your business and how do you go about getting them?

Well, you know, we have a lot of google reviews. You got to provide a great service or there’s nothing to review positively about your business. So you gotta make sure you get that taken care of first. But I will tell you, everyone talks about Google reviews and while I feel like that is really important, um, I think reviews on some other sites are just as important if you’re wanting to actually translate jobs booked directly to a dollar amount that you spent with that company. So, you know, I’m in the home improvement industry. So for me, I’m. Yelp is a good one. Uh, Angie’s list, home advisor, thumbtack, all these. I noticed I was booking more jobs when I got more reviews on those sites as well,

so I want to tap it. Received it

in general are good. You got to have multiple strings of income. You got to have multiple lines of references.

Can I. I want to pick your brain about yelp reviews were so many listeners, so many listeners who’ve reached out. A lot of people in the fitness business. We coach a lot of companies in the fitness business and they’ll have, let’s say for verified reviews, but 18 reviews that aren’t quote unquote recommended by Yelp. What advice would you have the business owner out there that has reviews from real yelpers, but they’re, they’re not showing up in yelp. Is there a process for that that you’ve found to be effective to get your reviews from yelp verified or quote unquote recommended? I think is the language.

I’ll give the safest advice I can give anyone. You don’t want to ask for reviews because if they put a big banner across your business profile and it says that this company solicit reviews and so, so there may not be up to our standards. Now. That’s not what’s happening per se with the 18 unrecommended in the three or four that are recommended in that situation. Uh, you’ll, you’ll think not everyone’s equal and that people that get more reviews on yelp probably know what they’re talking about a little bit more and so they weight more. So when you vet those 18 reviews that are glowing reviews for your business, but they’re not showing up in the review algorithm, it’s probably because to the second, first, third or fifth business that they’ve ever done a review on. And the ones that are popping up typically are your, your heavy heavy reviewers that are doing 20, 30 reviews a year.

So

my advice and the strategy, my advice, the strategy is you got to get aggressive with the other marketing, get more clients while the heck out of them, and it’ll kind of take care of itself because you’ll get more of those heavy yelp reviewers. The more customers you do and the more customers you. Wow.

I think what happens is that somebody, somebody listening, not none of our listeners, but it’s the friend of our listeners there, Jesse, they want to get rich quick and they don’t like the idea of wowing their customers so mad. I want to. I want to get your take on this. People often think that because somebody is good at marketing like Jesse is or somebody is good at growing their business like Jesse and his brother are. They obviously don’t care about quality. That’s the assumption. People think that the quantity as that goes up, the quality must go down, but if that were true, you know, southwest airlines would be crashing a lot of planes. Disney world would have a lot of complaints. I mean, but in fact southwest airlines has far fewer accidents than the average individual. A pilot and you know, Disney world has far fewer incidents than like a small, a local amusement park. So the quality and the quantity are actually tied together. The higher the quality, the quantity. Talk to us about what a Jesse and his brother do exceptionally well as it relates to providing great quality and quantity of service.

Sure, and I think you’re right. I do think they do go hand in hand and I think specifically when you’re looking at a service based company, we’re, you know, we’re in an invasive environment, we’re going into someone’s home. There’s a lot of trust that’s there. Right? And where the carpet industry, everyone can see their carpets, right? If you’re a roofing company you made, you know you’re not climbing on the roof. Usually you just looks good and you assume it’s done, but on a carpet you need to see it, right? You’re going to see it before and after. So you know what they do exceptionally well. They start from the ground floor. It doesn’t matter if you’re a great car, if you’re a great marketing company, because that’s the only going to last so long. Right? So when I, I’m in Denver, Colorado and I just typed in St Louis carpet cleaning and they show up at 93 reviews.

The next closest company he’s got 42. You’re not going to get 92 reviews, in fact, you’ll probably only get five and probably four out of five of those would be bad if your actual service is not good. Right. So I think a lot of companies out there, they struggle with two things. One is train their employees on the importance of getting reviews and and Jesse’s exactly right, right. We talk a lot about Google, but that’s just kinda the ground for, for us as well. There’s also things like yelp and shopper approved and all these different types of things that you should be able to do and it’s building the culture. If you’re confident in what you’re delivering to your customers, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be, you know, giving them the resources to give you a review orders doing a good job and that and having like yelp take care of itself.

Right? So for them, it’s starting ground for making sure that the actual services being done at the highest level, following that up with a great communication skills during the customer to the actual technician, the technician, to the manager, manager back to Jesse and his brother Charles Ryan, and understanding the marketing on the back end. Where am I spending my money, right? Where is it going, where am I really performing at a high level, where am I not and why is that actually happening? I think so many companies don’t understand where their numbers are and what’s happening, so they don’t make any adjustments because they don’t know where to sit, where to look. They have every level of that taken care of, but it starts with great customer service and everything else kind of takes care of itself. And I think they’ve done a very good job of that.

Well, I want to respect your time. So yeah, I wouldn’t want to get your take on that because I want to make sure I respect your business conferences time and get your tickets surface. Skype has a little bit of a delay there, but what happened with your hot take?

Okay, so the time that we’re in right now, I call it the, uh, the baker, the butcher, and the candlestick maker. Two point zero a hundred years ago you had a local community and there was two pitchers in your town and everyone will went to one and the rest went to the other one. And so one owned the lion’s share, the butchered business. And the other one didn’t sound familiar. Yup. Okay. So when we had mass media, what could happen was you could actually out market and advertise to word of mouth and so quality went down, customer service went down because you could just pump money into advertising and you could keep getting new customers with reviews. Even though we’re a global, it’s a very small community now because now when you get on Google and you search for St Louis Carpet cleaning admin group of people that are only looking for carpet cleaning. And so those reviews become so important. Like how it used to be 100 years ago. Is it digitally now?

I agree with that, I agree with that and I think that um, one thing that you guys are doing very, very well is you are, there’s so many things you’re doing well, but one thing that Jonathan Barnett always praises you about and speaks highly of you about you and your brother Charles, Jesse, he says Jesse and Charles are, they have an endless desire to get better. It seems like you’re, you know, you’ve, you’ve learning, uh, as a continual process and not an event. You seemed like you buy into the Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continual improvement. Could you talk to us about how you organize your daily schedule? What is, like, what if you wake up today? What mean? What does a typical day look like for you? What time are you waking up? Walk us through those first couple hours of your day and how you get your day started. Right?

So typically Monday through Friday, I’m waking up at five, 20 in the morning, getting up when the dog out, going to the gym and working out, coming back, cooking breakfast for the kids before they go to school, send them up to school after that. It’s completely wide open. So depending on what’s in my calendar, I may be having a meeting with an attorney or I may be driving to a location and teaching the leadership class, or I may just be on my laptop working on customer reviews, a new marketing ideas. I’m at the point where I, if it’s necessary for me to do it, I’ve got to find someone to make it so it’s not necessarily that I do it and I have a lot of free time to do a lot of thinking, lot of researching. And it also allows me when there is a crisis that an audible comes up, I can call it and I could make the right decision. I’m the biggest advice I’d give to anyone at, at a certain level. If you don’t have yourself that free to do that, um, you’re never going to be really able to grow because you’ve got to be looking at the next couple of things you want to do, not just what you want to do tomorrow. And so keeping my calendar open and being available to do different things I think is probably one of the best things I’ve done in the last three or four years and that’s why my company has grown so much.

Now. You also though have stores that are opening at a set time everyday and I’m not trying to paint you into a corner or or tripling. I ask you questions that you’re not maybe ready for, but sports clips every day. What time did the store is typically open? Are there different times for each store? Is there a set time they open every morning?

Nine am.

Okay. So your stores open at nine and although you have a wide open schedule, the stores open at nine and although you might not participate in the weekly management calls, those calls happen. So you have a rigidity to the way that businesses operate. Those schedules are very, I just make sure the listeners get this. Those schedules are very locked and loaded. I mean, consumers can depend on your little Caesar’s. What time does the little caesars open to people? We’ll do breakfast pizzas.

10 30 am is when we opened.

So you, you, you, you stick to the guidelines. You’re open in a set time, but you personally have a free form schedule, so that’s. I will make sure that listeners get that. You personally have a schedule is very free and open, but your stores are very rigid and very. They’re, they’re locked in. I mean you customers can depend upon you opening at that set time. Final question for you, Jesse, if you could give one piece of advice to the hundreds of thousands of people who join us on a daily basis on our soon to be number one podcast in the world, my friend. What is the number one advice you’d give to all of our listeners?

I would say I would stop setting goals and milestones.

Stop setting goals. The problem with a goal, start setting your.

It’s a finish line, right? So once you hit the goal, stuck in this thing called the gap, you don’t know what to do next, you don’t know where you’re going to take that momentum. If you’re setting milestones, you know when you hit it, you’re still moving the right direction, you can celebrate it, uh, but you know that there’s continual growth and there’s continual involvement and effort being put into it. A lot of times we set goals. Once we hit it, you see a relapse when you set milestones, you seldom see them to relapse.

Right now, Jesse,

the milestone I have right now, I’m going to create another company that the goal is to have an Ebitda of minimum of $5 million within the next 40 years.

Awesome. A brand new company categories. Can you tell that?

Yeah, it’s going to be in the, uh, the bar restaurant.

Oh cool. I’ve got a great. When we get, when we get off the, I’ve got a great idea for one in one. Run it by.

You guys would like each other. By the way. You and Dr z had very similar ethos. You guys would, you guys would get along.

Yeah, I can tell. Um, if you could go back in time to when you started up, you and your brother started up, what advice or what would you do differently? What would you tell yourself if you could get the Delorean time machine go back in time

from the get go? I think it would be totally how I view people and how I treat and speak to people. I was more of a stick than carrot leader early in my life and has become mostly carrot and that’s thrown away at the stick kind of leader.

So sometimes you want to pull it out though. Sometimes you got to go that stick right now.

Know the sticks just to shake things loose. One swap books. If you can’t lead with a carrot then you’re not really a leader in my opinion.

You’re right. Well said. Well said.

Well, I’ll tell you what to tell you what their thrive nation. If you’re out there and you’re saying to yourself, I want them to be able to make six figures a year, I want to be able to have time freedom, financial freedom. Matt, is it possible to make a six figure income by buying an Oxi fresh? How much does it cost? Give us the details,

you know, single franchise unit, 37,000, 900 comes with equipment package protected territory. I’m about $70 worth of product plus the training out here in Denver, Colorado that I’ve mentioned previously. Certainly able to do a six period income. Everything, you know, it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a progression of, of your ability to um, you know, follow the systems and do the things necessary to grow and grow fast. Everyone kind of grows at their own speed and that’s why we have, you know, franchise coaches and you can lean on other franchisees like Jessie, um, if that would be a resource for you. So I’m 37, nine upfront. You want to have about 20, $25,000 operating capital as well. Put aside for things like insurance and local marketing and vehicle employee costs if you’re not doing the jobs in the beginning. Uh, but yeah, I mean when, when we have the conversation, we’ll discuss in detail what your goals are, where you want to be, and we can work backwards from there. Right. And so, um, you know, we have many, many franchisees operating these businesses at different levels, different ownership styles, different goals, um, and we can actually really set you up to get where you need to be.

How many locations, how many locations now, how many locations are up and operational right now approximately?

We’re nearing 400 right now. We’re pretty close on the exact numbers, probably around about two or three 80. Uh, we have several new franchisees in the process of training this next month we have four current franchisees expanding to secondary or third territories as well. Um, so, you know, we just want to keep the growth with good franchisees pushing the ball forward in a positive way.

I’ll say this for the listeners out there who are contemplating going to thrive time show.com, forward slash oxi fresh to learn more about buying an Oxi fresh franchise. I would say I would never respect anybody who doesn’t have at least 500 franchise locations, like three 82 me’s not impressive. That’s impressive. Matt, I’m excited for you, Jesse. Thank you so much. I know that, that the time truly is your most important asset. Thank you for hopping on here to mentor the thousands of business conferences listeners to hundreds of thousands of listeners. I cannot appreciate and say thank you enough. You’re just a. you’re a gym. I hear about you all the time. Jonathan Barnett just thinks you’re the best. Matt always bragging on you. Chris is always bragging on you. Thank you and Charles for setting the standard there at oxy fresh as a franchisee and Z. without any further ado, we want to end the show with the boom. Here we go. Matt, are you ready? In Denver? Jessia, you’re ready in St Louis,

are you in St Louis? Are you in St Louis? Okay, here we go. From Denver St Louis. Tell us both.